In ‘news that should surprise nobody but it’s nice to have it quantified’: high speed rail is less carbon intensive than short-haul flights, even when you take into account the full life cycle (including construction).
In other words, we should be banning short-haul flights and investing in trains.
In somewhat related news I was just looking at travelling to Barcelona from Utrecht, where I live (next to Amsterdam).
Booking ahead in April it's literally 6x more expensive to take the train than it is to fly - about €100 vs €650, though the flight price is without hold luggage.
This is insane. I don't want to fly anymore except when it's inescapable (like when visiting family in Australia), but the economics make the choice impossible.
@Brendanjones Interestingly I found that the cost of train travel e.g. southern DE to some corner of UK was almost identical to a car hire plus hotel plus fuel. I was so amazed. Trains are SO EXPENSIVE. They seem to have no economy of scale.
I might have to look at buses, but why don't we have high speed rail between all major cities? Trains are so much more comfortable for long-distance travel than buses.
Trains should also be more consistent and faster, due to not contending with traffic and because of higher speeds.
@Brendanjones It‘s so stupid. We faced the same dilemma and decided to focus on the journey with an Interrail ticket, maybe that‘s something for you too :)
@dominic Thanks, will have a look at that option. I really hope that the upcoming unification of EU rail booking systems should make finding options like this easier.
@urlyman What’s ‘high speed’ for you? As I commented to another person, I don’t feel the need for 500 km/h bullet trains or maglev trains or anything like that, for exactly the energy and material costs you’re talking about. 350-400 km/h top speed is amazing - if we can do 1000km journeys in 3 hours then that’s definitely fast enough IMO.
Maybe not fast enough for the businessman who wants to do same-day journeys back and forth, but then is that really necessary?
@Geoffberner I think that's an 'also' not an 'or' option. If rail is to compete with air travel for any distance over about 500km then I think it has to be HSR.
That said, I don't mean maglev trains or anything super schmancy like that, I'm quite okay with sticking to 'normal' rail tech and top speeds of 300-400km/h.
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